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Ayn Rand’s seminal work Atlas Shrugged is a goldmine of reframes and pithy observations. Ponderous though her prose can be she is able to draw concepts from all parts of life around a central narrative and shake your reality. Intellectual mastery, if you will….

A theme running throughout the book is that modern society is reaping a failed harvest of post-modernist cultural-relativist collectivist bullshit. Culture has degenerated to such a low that people are reduced to base instincts and an existential fear (from having no objective values to inform their moral code) makes them huddle into collectivist organisations and attack anybody who strives for individual greatness. In such a climate people glorify mediocrity and failure, inverting human virtues of hard work, skill, and wealth creation. The sexual expression of this loser’s mentality is treating sex as an angry value-taking base act that cheapens all participants.

A winner, yesterday

So let’s consider an eloquent rant from my favourite character Francisco D’Anconia on the topic of sex (page 489), then I’ll draw some conclusions for Game:

“Do you remember what I said about money and about the men who seek to reverse the law of cause and effect? The men who try to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the man who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures – which can’t be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man’s sense of his own value.”

“Did it ever occur to you that it’s the same issue? The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think – for the same reason – that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one’s mind, choice or code of values…. but in fact a man’s sexual choice is the result and sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself…”

“He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience – or to fake – a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer – because only the possession of a heroine will give him a sense of achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut.”

“He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises – because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him. Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives – and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy”

Vibe is everything. The girl must feel you are comfortable with who you are and she will match that vibe, feeling protected and cherished. If you seek out sluts to nail then hate on them for being sluts, you are training your self-conscious that this is your station in life. Good people will run a mile from your creepy vibe. Your game is a frantic race to bang the girl before all your skeletons fall out of their closets.

Reality is shaken, ego-trap rebooting

Intellectual mastery is integral to attracting and keeping top class women. To provide order to her you must have straightened out your own contradictions so she feels your leadership as a straight line. This is not to abandon Contrast Game, but this latter is a reflection of your multi-dimensional character rather than your mess of contradictions.

“Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity and pain or weakness or sacrifice…. and he will have cut himself in two… He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure, and then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex – nothing but shame.”

This underlies much Dark Side thinking. For all the posturing of reasonably-successful PUAs about how women are snakes, sluts, love jerks etc they are really projecting their own broken moral compass onto the girls. Yes, girls have a certain predictable animal nature but they are also capable of submitting to effective leadership and having their characters remade into sweet sexy companions in life’s journey. Figuring out how to recognise such girls (Type 1s, and Type 2:1s) and then leading them to their potential is higher order Game. Creeping won’t work. When you hear a man hating on women he bangs, dripping with moralistic language, then it’s a fair bet he’s got some inner game work left to do.

It is not “realistic” to say women are whores and that a fulfilling LTR is impossible. It’s not “pragmatic” to say female affection needs make you a sucker for oneitis and you should thus treat women as disposable cum buckets. Such claims are not at a higher-level of red pill wisdom. They are a self-abdication of responsibility to your own happiness. It is giving up on the finer things in life. Sour grapes.

“Just as physical action unguided by an idea is a fool’s self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one’s code of values. It’s the same issue, and you would know it. Your inviolate sense of self-esteem would know it. You would be incapable of desire for a woman you despised… One kind of half is the man who despises money, factories, skyscrapers and his own body. He holds undefined emotions about non-conceivable subjects as the meaning of life and as his claim to virtue. And he cries with despair, because he can feel nothing for the women he respects, but finds himself in bondage to an irresistable passion for a slut from the gutter. He is the man whom people call an idealist.”

“The other kind of half is that man whom people call practical, the man who despises principles, abstractions, art, philosophy and his own mind. He regards the acquisition of material objects as the only goal of existence – and he laughs at the need to consider their purpose of their source. He expects them to give him pleasure – and he wonders why the more he gets, the less he feels. He is the man who spends his time chasing women. Observe the triple fraud he perpetrates on himself. He will not acknowledge his need for self-esteem, since he scoffs at such a concept as moral values; yet he feels the profound self-contempt which comes from believing he is a piece of meat. He will not acknowledge, but he knows that sex is the physical expression of a tribute to personal values. So he tries, by going through the motions of the effect, to acquire that which should have been the cause. He tries to gain a sense of his own value from the women who surrender to him – and he forgets that the women he picks have neither character nor judgement nor standardof value. He tells himself that all he’s after is physical pleasure – but observe that he tires of his women in a week or a night, that he despises professional whores and that he loves to imagine he is seducing virtuous girls who make a great exception for his sake. It is the feeling of acheivement that he seeks and never finds.”

I believe that latter Practical Man is utterly skewered by Mr D’Aconia. It is the classic player trap and a fair bet to assume most men with a laycount above 100 either fit the mold now, or used to. When you here a man brag about creeping for a ho train of 6s, that’s who you are talking to.

This is precisely why Game requires working on your own personal value and confronting your demons. It’s why JJ says your game is a reflection of who you are as a man, and if you want better girls you need to become a better man. You can sex girls on two different planes of existence – it can be a mutually life-affirming experience of joy, or it can be a frenzied animal coupling to bust a nut and placate the demons for a few more days. The former draws a girl into your reality for complete soul collection, the latter gives flighty, flakey, psycho fuck buddies that disappear into the ether.

Is all this mental masturbation of late because you’re not out on the streets any more getting laid? A laptop is easier than daygame I guess.

When I eat a biscuit I bite it and swallow, enjoying it for what it is. I could write pages on the biochemical composition of the biscuit, the complex anatomy and physiology that goes into biting, the structure of the digestive biscuit, the rights and wrongs of if biscuit eating is moral etc. It’s just a biscuit. I could be hit by a bus tomorrow. Enjoy the biscuit.

From the pictures/videos on your blog, I have only seen two girls I wouldn’t describe as you “creeping” on 6s and 7s. They all seem to be vulnerable and fucked up. Please show us evidence of you with high-quality 9s and 10s that have their life sorted then maybe I’ll listen to your preaching about your new “saintly” life. In our lair, “doing a Krauser” is slang for aggressive, creepy, game on 6s. Think about it.

The “mental masturbation” of late is a product of the fact he is one of the most intelligent bloggers out there (along with the likes of Roissy who will also digress often onto politics, feminism etc) and as such will have wide ranging deep views on a variety of topics.

His blog hence his right to post what he wants – I’m not a fan of the in depth theorising but we all have to admit theres a tonne of top material in the archives for those of us who want to stick to pickup and infields. The rest of us should be less on blogs and more in the field. “The game is played in the field, not in front of your screen” to paraphrase MM.

Also a number of the deeper punters actually enjoy this intellectual theorising.

You “lair.” Do you even realize how awful that sounds? And you’re calling Krauser a creep?

I don’t necessarily agree with Krauser’s love for Ayn Rand and objectivism as a philosophy, but he is one of the few guys out there who puts it all out for you to see. I can think of maybe 1 or 2 other bloggers who actually show infield footage. People complain about the kinds of girls he goes for, like he should be trying it on English girls. Why? You think all the girls Krauser shows are 6s? Fine. Show us your infields of the 8s and 9s you’ve banged. I can’t wait to see them.

Good read, Krauser. It’s interesting to read Ayn Rand’s writing and apply the themes to the current day and age. Reading that and knowing what I know from Game blogs, I feel a certain level of conflict.

This, for example, I can completely relate to as it was my mentality before 2011: “…because he can feel nothing for the women he respects, but finds himself in bondage to an irresistable passion for a slut from the gutter. He is the man whom people call an idealist.” I think the “idealist” suffers a lot from seeing the behavior (the typically immoral behavior) of others and letting it affect their inner game.. this happens because they aren’t fully comfort with themselves.

The other characterization doesn’t fit me either though, although I would normally describe myself as “practical” — I don’t feel like material consumption is the be all, end all in life and I certainly don’t shun the arts or philosophy.. I learn from them. The rest of that description is the classic player trap. Which is enticing in theory, but I think we all know deep down in reality it is an empty existence.

Something struck me recently when a guy I follow on Twitter posted the following: “When you completely relax the assumption that there is no one right woman out there for you, you will be at peace as a man.”

I think that about sums up all of what I know and have learned from Game blogs over the last few years. Boiling it down to a simple phrase like that has really sunk-in for me.

I’m always a lurker on PUA blogs but this post is so refreshing I have to reply. Many times I doubt taking advice from these “PUAs” because as you put it,

“For all the posturing of reasonably-successful PUAs about how women are snakes, sluts, love jerks etc they are really projecting their own broken moral compass onto the girls.”

^^ That’s my main problem with the PUA community. Women shouldn’t be put on the pedestal, nor should they be objectified and vilified so much. They are conflicted human beings just as men are, and we all have our faults. Once we forgive others as well as ourselves for our own faults then we can have meaningful and honest relationships and eliminate the negative ones.

If you view women as evil sluts who are out to get you then that is what you will see. If you have strong inner game and do not seek validation or happiness from others because you have it from within then you won’t take other people’s bullshit and insecurities personally. Inner game is inherently more important than game and without it everything is a farce.

I love this quote right here too,

“You can sex girls on two different planes of existence – it can be a mutually life-affirming experience of joy, or it can be a frenzied animal coupling to bust a nut and placate the demons for a few more days. The former draws a girl into your reality for complete soul collection, the latter gives flighty, flakey, psycho fuck buddies that disappear into the ether.”

I do have to agree that even though it’s a good read, it’s quite hypocritical. I did a bootcamp with Nick last year and I knew his theories on alpha men and reprogramming women were too “in your head” even then.. He relied on lots of old school game lines and was the master of picking up “quirky” weird looking vulnerable girls. I was amazed that he was so immersed in the pick up life and had quit his job for it. A good teacher, but certainly very game-like and unnatural. It’s weird that he’s rejecting what he so strongly preached. Just my opinion. [That’s the point, actually. I’m not pretending I was never dark side, or that I’ve reached my goal. The blog is a journey, not a final product. K.]

Some people believe that Ayn Rand quoters are a bunch of virgins who could not get laid in a whorehouse with a sackful of cash………….Thanks for shattering that perception [I suspect most of them are as you describe. Her individualism could easily provide solace to people who can’t get on in social groups. But that’s no reflection on the quality of her ideas. K.]

Thanks for this site and your fearless approach at becoming a better man. This post has inspired me on so many levels. I got into game not too long ago and decided it wasnt about me having as much sex as possible but about changing myself and my views and to truly improve myself as a person. To really possess true inner game. I identify with how you think in alot of ways and also as ive seen from some of your posts you have had some mma training (said you do bjj before i know that). Im a pro fighter and thai boxing instructor and I identify completely with your approach to game/self improvement.

All these posts about inner game have really helped me to identify what things I needed to change and how to go about it. I truly believe in what you say about a high value man that can take a woman and lead her in a direction that fills her with satisfaction/love/admiration. I dont mean to say this means “till death do us part” though. Not only that but a high value man who can alter his surroundings/influence people to adopt his frame in all aspects of his life.

I read Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal about 10 yrs ago and this girl I was flirting with at my job gave me a copy of the Fountainhead so I think Im gonna get back into her writings. Havent read atlas shrugged but those quotes were very poignant.

I still have so much to learn but this is truly exciting. Thanks again bro.

I agree with your premise, and will restate it such that hedonism must include love to be the most effective. Or that celebration includes respect.

I’ve always found it strange that it’s not universally obvious that a man’s life well lived includes bonding and a woman or women who love him. There is a flavor of feeling good that is additive to all other flavors, and that you can’t get any other way. It’s like steak and salt. Sex is the steak, but without some salt, it’s not the most hedonistic experience you can make of it.

This is why I often advocate to men to not fuck around too much, as it’s prudent to not lose the ability to bond. A high partner count can be fine, casual sex can be fine, multiple LTRs, serial monogamy, all fine. It’s not exactly what you do, it’s your approach. And it’s possible that too much approach can fuck up a man’s hedonistic imperative.

I also like your idea of owning a woman’s heart, mind, body and soul as a high expression of hedonism. I agree. This is one of lifes finer pleasures, and it is a pervasive pleasure, that stays with you in quiet moments, moments of solitude, when you fall asleep and wake, and even into some dreams. It is in your body, and it is a feeling of feeling good.

Life with a refined knowledge of the advantages of affection is better. A man is not a real man – not a full man – unless he is a master of affection.